World of Webcomics: 'Darths & Droids'

World of Webcomics is a series devoted to exploring the world of online comics and their target audiences, as well as their art styles, storylines, and the general enjoyment that they provide.

I’ve never had the opportunity to play a Star Wars tabletop RPG—I almost never tabletop anymore, sadly—and I’ve often wondered what it would be like, so I was very happy when someone showed me this particular comic. Take all six films and act them out as tabletop game, with six individual campaigns, and then throw in the characteristics of some classic tabletop geek archetypes, mixed with photo stills from the films themselves, and you’ve got yourself a webcomic. Photo stills aren’t anything new—Irregular Webcomic did it, my recent review of Troops of Doom showed that they do it—but the fact that the characters are themselves playing characters is really interesting to me. Right off the bat, the comic pulled me in with the conversation between the PCs and the GM being hilarious to read; it took me back to my tabletop days, and that’s what really kept me going. Darths & Droids updates Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays at darthsanddroids.net.

MINOR SPOILERS BELOW

Art Style

There isn’t a real art style, but borrowed photo stills from major motion pictures. There’s no addition of other images or photo stills aside from the movies, so the comic doesn’t really have its own, independent form.

Writing and Dialogue

The writing is absolutely hilarious; it takes a very familiar story and shifts it around to what life would be like if it was nothing but a tabletop RPG. The way the photo stills are edited is superb, changing the story of the films to fit the campaigns while still maintaining some of their original intentions; however, because it is taking photo stills as a resource, there is a lot of dialogue to read through. Without the dialogue, there would be no way to know what is actually going on in the story. If you don’t like reading a lot of text, then you won’t enjoy this webcomic.

Appeal

The target audiences that would best enjoy this comic are certainly the fans of the Star Wars films (even the ones who liked the prequel trilogy) as well as any experienced tabletop RPG players. If you haven’t done either of these things—and sometimes it seems as though both are necessary to fully understand the situations shown—then you’re not going to get a lot of the little jokes that are presented. You’re more than wlecome to try, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.